


Apologies

by rileynoah



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, Comfort, F/F, Fluff, Maggie Sawyer Backstory, abuse mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-16 18:54:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9285476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rileynoah/pseuds/rileynoah
Summary: Maggie continually apologises for trivial things and Alex takes notice.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Mad props to [@404artnotfound](http://404artnotfound.tumblr.com) and [@whoeverdares](http://whoeverdares.tumblr.com) on tumblr for helping me proof and edit this one.

One of the first things she notices about Maggie is that she apologizes a lot. For trivial things. It seems like it is almost a subconscious thing; Alex isn’t even sure if Maggie knows that she is doing it.

The first time it clicked that Maggie was apologising so copiously, she doesn’t dwell on it.

At the bar, they’ve claimed their regular pool table, and both of them have had a few beers each. Alex is feeling wonderfully buzzed. Maggie takes a shot at the five ball and misses by an inch. Alex straightens up and snaps her fingers dramatically. “So close!”

“Damn! Sorry.” Maggie chuckles, passing the cue to Alex. As she takes it, Alex pauses, the crinkle between her eyebrows start as she looks curiously over to Maggie.

“Sorry? For missing the shot?” Alex queries. “I’m not.” Maggie crosses her arms over her chest and rolls her eyes. 

“Alright, Danvers. Show me what you’ve got.” 

She lets the moment go, not wanting to interrupt the game, but it lingers in the back of her mind.

 

…

When she trudges into her apartment after a fairly uneventful day, she finds Maggie standing in her kitchen, two open beers on the counter and holding a takeout menu for their favourite italian restaurant.

“What about Thai instead of pizza tonight?” Alex calls as she collapses onto the couch. Maggie solemnly lowers the menu back into the drawer and shuffles around for a thai menu. 

“Yeah, sure… sorry.” It’s like an afterthought that doesn’t fully register with Maggie, but Alex notices it and frowns, pushing herself up so that she is kneeling on the couch, her arms coming to rest on the back to speak to the detective.

“What are you sorry for?” The question seems to stump the shorter woman as she pauses, now holding the thai menu instead.

“Oh, well, we’ve had pizza a lot. I should have realised.” Maggie finally replies with a smile, turning around to dial the restaurant's phone number.

“It’s okay. You don’t have to apologize…” Alex says with a light chuckle, her slight frown now smoothing out. The detective simply laughs it off, greeting the lady on the other end of the phone.

And it’s then that Alex sees it everywhere.

Maggie apologizes when she can’t get her jeans off quick enough to join a dishevelled Alex in bed. She apologizes when Alex ducks into the bathroom while she is in the shower to brush her teeth. She apologizes when she’s coming down from her orgasm, always a different reason; for being too loud, for being too sweaty, or for wiggling too much as they are going to sleep afterwards.

So one day, a Saturday on which they plan to spend the whole day being lazy, Alex decides that she is going to count. She’ll tally up exactly how many times Maggie apologizes to her and for what reason so that she can try and figure out why the shorter woman continues to say sorry for things that no one needs to apologize for.

By the end of the day, they are lounging together on Maggie’s couch, Netflix playing on the TV and empty pizza boxes litter the coffee table in front of them. They’re wearing over-sized t-shirts and underwear, snuggled under a large fleecy blanket. Alex shifts slightly, moving so that she can stretch the leg she has been sitting on for over an hour. When she does, Maggie shifts to let her move and mutters an apology under her breath.

“What for?” Alex asks her quietly, trying not to scare her because weeks later, she still can’t be sure if Maggie even realises what she is doing. Maggie leans back even further so that she can look at Alex.

“I didn’t know you were uncomfortable, that’s all,” she explains, a soft smile on her lips. At this point Alex puts an end to the game. She goes to settle back against Alex but the taller woman stops her, placing a strong hand on either shoulder and holding her out so that she can really look into her eyes.

“Maggie…” Alex doesn’t know how to broach the subject. When she had brought it up with her friends, none of them could really offer an explanation either. Maggie only looks back at her, patiently waiting for her to continue.

“You apologize a lot, Maggie. For things that you don’t need to apologize for…” Alex trails off there, unsure of where to lead the conversation from here. Maggie is frowning now, seemingly deep in thought as she tries to remember.

“Do I?” she asks, confirming Alex’s suspicion that Maggie’s excessive apologies were a subconscious habit. The agent leans to the coffee table, grabbing her phone and unlocking it. She touches the screen a few times to pull up her list and flips it to show the detective.

“I tallied them,” she starts. “All of the times you’ve said sorry today and what it was for.”  
Maggie takes the phone and reads it, her frown increasing by the second.

“You apologized 17 times for things that definitely did not warrant an apology and I didn’t know if you noticed but it seems you haven’t and I was _worried._ I was worried that you thought you were doing something wrong or you thought that I needed or wanted an apology and I don’t, you know? I’m just sort of confused,” Alex cuts herself off, noticing the way Maggie has been staring down at the phone in silence since she started talking.

“I honestly didn’t realise...” Alex can’t see Maggie’s eyes but she can hear the catch in her throat when she speaks and it prompts her to bring a hand to Maggie’s chin, pulling her up gently so that she can look into the tear glazed eyes.

“Maggie, what is it?” Alex is concerned now, seeing the tears forming in the corners of her girlfriend’s eyes. Was it wrong to bring it up? She didn’t think it would have affected Maggie like this. She squeezes her shoulder, trying to bring her attention back.

“I, uh…” Maggie starts but Her mouth gapes like it is trying to form words but no sound escapes until Alex leans forward to hold her in a tight hug. “I’m sorry.” It’s almost ironic, but Alex doesn’t find it funny. Instead, she pulls back so that she can lock eyes with the detective again and very sincerely tells her that she has nothing to be sorry for.

“One of my exes...” Alex wipes away her tears with the pads of her thumbs gently as Maggie begins to speak, her tone wavering ever so slightly, her hands beginning to shake. “One of my exes didn’t treat me very… Uh, well? I guess you could say. I didn’t realise what was happening for over a year of our relationship but…” A deep shuddering breath. “I started to get really depressed so I went and saw a shrink.” Alex can barely contain her surprise at the thought of Maggie “kick-ass” Sawyer voluntarily going to see a psychiatrist, but she keeps her features in check, trying only to listen very carefully to Maggie’s words.

“The doc said that my depression seemed to all lead back to my relationship and that it was… unhealthy.” Maggie speaks stiffly. “Abusive.” Like the words aren’t hers. “She also counted,” Maggie lets out what could be either a sob or a chuckle and even looking straight into Maggie’s averted eyes, Alex can’t tell.

“She counted?”

“I didn’t want to believe her, like I couldn’t believe my girlfriend would do something like that. So to prove her point, she counted how many times I apologized to her and what for and it scared me enough to start realising what was going on…” Maggie trails off into a whisper again, and all Alex wants to do is hold her and make her feel better. She had no idea that Maggie’s past relationship had been so hard on her, so unforgiving.

“So you started to notice things that she would do?” Alex asks quietly, trying to help the detective through her nerves without scaring her completely. Maggie nods, head bobbing a few times before she buries her face in her hands, trying to control the way her shoulders ache to shudder at the memories.

“The guilt trips. The way she would flip the situation to make something she did my fault. We would fight over things she did…” The shuddering breaths that the shorter woman was taking felt like a stab in Alex’s chest, over and over again. Her heart ached for the woman she loved.

“Like she would flirt with some girl, I would get upset and tell her off, and she would flip the situation and make it my fault. I wasn’t giving her enough attention, we weren’t having enough sex. Stuff like that. After the fight I would always feel like it was my fault and I’d apologize…” Maggie looks up at Alex for the first time since she started telling the story, her eyes swimming with tears and fear. “Seems I’ve formed a habit of it…”

Alex pulls her into a long kiss, trying to communicate her sympathy and her sorrow and her anger. How could anyone treat her like this, how could anyone be so horrible to someone so deserving of the world. She can’t even fathom how Maggie must feel. Like she is always at fault, like everything she does is a mistake.

“You have nothing, absolutely nothing, to apologize for,” Alex whispers against her lips, kissing her to emphasise her words. “And I’ll remind you of that, every day until you believe it.”

Maggie lets out another laugh-sob that Alex can’t quite discern and she kisses the woman again.

Maggie pulls back far enough to look into her eyes. Her eyebrows quirk and her dimples begin to show through the smile on her face. Alex pushes a few strands of Maggie’s hair back, tucking them behind her ears.

“I’m glad you told me, I promise we’re going to work through this.” Maggie only smiles deeper then, looking down at her hands as they fidget in her lap. “Yeah, okay… I’m so-” Alex cuts her off with a kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> This is something I wrote after a discussion with a friend who's freshly out of an emotionally abusive relationship. I've also experienced a relationship like this and it's an issue that is close to my heart and so fanfiction therapy commenced.


End file.
